Friday, August 19, 2016

Yay for libertarians (\sarc)

I become more and more convinced as the years roll on that libertarianism is the most destructive and dangerous political philosophy since the height of Soviet style communism. Even though I didn't read Gawker with any regularity at all, I think Peter Thiel's campaign against it was petty and ridiculous.

But the main objection to it [libertarianism], of course, is the key role cashed up libertarians in the US have had in obstructionism of effective government policy on climate change in that country (and therefore, indirectly, internationally.) Sure, I can't directly blame them for Indian and Chinese obstructionism in past years (well, I don't think I can), but the US has been prevented from unleashing the proper power of capitalism to building clean energy because of libertarian funded objection to proper policy settings.

And, of course, libertarians have been key figures in the climate change policy wars in Australia. I see from recent media that Leyonhjelm tries to avoid sounding as nutty as Roberts on climate by saying his key objection to pricing carbon is that there is no point in doing it until other nations do. Yet this is disingenuous weasel words - his party's platform is clearly that climate change (as a serious issue to be addressed) has not yet been proved to their satisfaction:

Should the evidence become compelling that global warming is due to
human activity, that such global warming is likely to have significantly
negative consequences for human existence, and that changes in human
activity could realistically reverse those consequences, the LDP would
favour market-based options.

So don't believe Leyonhjelm's attempts to portray himself as just being Mr Pragmatic on this.